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In Germany, everyone pays attention. To get a license there, you don't have to just fog a mirror and sign your name. Photo by credit_00

Don't be so poor you can't pay attention

May 6, 2012

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Yea, though I drive through the Valley of the Shadow of Morons, I shall fear no evil, for I am paying attention!

I just drove to Utah and back—about 1,000 miles—and as a result, I have to revise my previous calculations about American drivers. I used to think that 98 percent of us were legally completely oblivious to the world around us but somehow still able to possess a driver's license. This was based on my having a driver's license from the California DMV for 37 years and more or less paying attention that whole time. The vast cumulative database in my head that resulted from more or less paying that attention has certainly saved my bacon many times over.

However, since this last trip, I have had to reassess my data. My new calculation is that only 75 percent of us are legally completely oblivious to the world around us, and the other 25 percent are desperately, recklessly trying to figure out a way to get around those 75-percenters. Maybe it's 85 percent who are completely oblivious to the world around them. Could be 90. But the fact is, most people just get into their cars, switch on the cruise control and never look around them again until they have to exit. This means that Harold Frumpweasel in the fast lane is blocking traffic because Mortimer Slurpmeister in the slow lane is also on cruise control, and neither one of them is aware of the other, or of the 15 cars, trucks and land yachts piled up behind them.

So no one gets anywhere on our Interstate Highway System any faster than the speed at which Throckmorton or Droolhauser has set his cruise control.

Why must this be?

I lived and drove in Germany for five years. In Germany, everyone pays attention. To get a license there, you don't have to just fog a mirror and sign your name. You have to spend your own money to take a pile of classes and pass a pile of tests. Everyone has to. Thus, you can trust your fellow drivers in Deutschland. You can believe that they are paying attention. Here at home, you can believe that they are not. In both places, you act accordingly.

I blame two things for our drooling drivers. First is cruise control. I have nothing against it; I like having it. But setting it doesn't mean you should forget it.

Second is speed limits. There was one stretch in Utah where the limit was 80 mph. But most of the rest of the country has speed limits that are deliriously slow. So people tune out. In Germany, no one tunes out, not even in the slow lane—which is where you stay unless you're actually passing someone!

Should we eliminate speed limits? No, even I can see that would be suicide, drivercide or whatever the resulting calamity would be called.

Should we have much, much better driver's ed and driver's license exams that measure concentration over longer periods? Yes!

Higher insurance premiums for awful drivers and much lower ones for good drivers? Yes.

Then and only then could we raise the speed limit. Then, once everyone's paying attention, there'd be no reason we couldn't all go 100 mph across much of the country—150 in Montana, Nevada and Utah.

But that's never going to happen. I think we'll see jet packs and flying cars first.